A Quiet Week

We returned from Rome last Monday; the car was indeed exactly where we left it at the train station parking lot, no ticket or boot or anything, which we were a little bit worried about.  There is a machine in said parking lot at which you enter X amount of time, and pay for parking accordingly.  So far as I could figure out at the time, it would only let me pay through Saturday, and so I was worried about getting a ticket at the least, and towed at the most - there was no English language option on the machine.  We couldn’t figure out exactly what we were meant to do with the ticket/paid receipt thing it printed, either.  We looked at other cars parked nearby; none of them had one sitting on the dashboard.  On the other hand, this is Italy; it seems as if drivers park and drive however they want to.  So we just left it on the dash and hoped for the best.  Assuming we don’t get a ticket in the mail 6 months from now, it’s all good. 

Speaking of Italian drivers basically doing whatever they want:  this is what our street looked like this morning - I’m not kidding when I say people park wherever and however they wish as the mood strikes them:

Good thing we don’t actually park on the street where our apartment is - we always park on the main drag, which is just around the corner.

The muffa seems to be under control for now; we have been letting the balcony doors as well as the bathroom window open during the day (the balcony doors have outside shutters with levered slats), and we run the dehumidifier 24/7 (Paolo empties it two or three times a day).  Tomorrow I will do a muffa check around all the windows and balcony doors and wipe away any mold I see with the special anti-muffa spray the landlord gave us.  Fingers crossed that it doesn’t get out of control again.

We are certainly getting a lot of fresh air in the house!  Unfortunately, since we’ve been back, the local temperature has dropped quite a bit.  In fact, Tuesday morning, I woke up to see this view outside my bathroom window:

Very pretty!  But I was glad we didn’t need to go anywhere in the car that day.  Honestly, I am a little worried about driving in snow and ice here in this mountainy area, with all the switchback roads and hairpin turns.

It’s been a fairly quiet week here; we did have a couple of days of sunshine, and not quite as much rain as usual.  In fact, it was so sunny yesterday that I took advantage of the good weather to do three loads of wash all in the same day, including sheets.  It’s a little difficult to wash sheets when you don’t have a dryer, because they’re so long.  We got ourselves a very large-sized rack that hangs over the balcony for just this reason:

That was the first load, just the one sheet and pillowcases.  Later I added the rest.  The wind picked up quite a bit (overall it's been a very breezy week here, with a “lazy wind,” the kind that’s too lazy to blow around you so it blows right through):

Fortunately, by the time we went to bed, the sheets were dry, which is not always the case; yesterday was not as damp as it so often has been here.

This week I did a little cooking:  I made stuffed shells in sauce.  I had to improvise a bit, as I could not find any pre-shredded mozzarella.  I seem to recall that I did see some, somewhere, but I can’t remember where, and anyway, the "real" stuff is so much better - I just sliced up a ball of good mozzarella and laid the pieces on the shells.  I whipped up a batch of homemade sauce for this dish, too:

Prepped for the oven

Ready to eat

They were tasty, if I say so myself.  We had leftovers for lunch the next day.  Note that I have not made any homemade pasta here (yet); I think I am a little nervous about doing it without my KitchenAid mixer to mix and knead the dough for me.

The difficulty of making a big batch of stuffed shells in a very flimsy aluminum pan did cause me to finally break down and buy some decent cookware though.  So the next time I won’t have to buy throw-away (or rather, recyclable) pans.

Speaking of trash and recycling:  it is a very different system here than it is at home.  First, we have a separate brown organico can that is just for organic/food trash (think compostables).  Then there are separate bins for paper/cardboard, glass and cans, and plastics, as well as for non-recyclable trash (rifiuti).  So we have all these separate bins to use…and, believe it or not, we’re aren’t quite sure of the exact pickup day(s).  We think is it Monday…the last time we put it out, it was picked up on a Monday…we just want to clarify whether it ALL goes out on the same day, or whether there is a different day for each, or what.   I noticed our next door neighbor sometimes (randomly?) leaves out blue bags of (presumably) trash that are picked up - so maybe they come through more than once a week?  I did ask at the town hall awhile back, but no one ever clarified this for me.  I've just now sent them a PEC email, so that they have to answer me (PEC is a kind of special email they have in Italy; it’s like sending the electronic equivalent of a certified letter.  You have to have a special email account in order to send PEC emails; I’m not aware of an American equivalent to this system).  We’ll see how long it takes them to get back to me on this…

We had a chance to talk to family today, which was great!  We were also treated to a little piano concert via the magic of the Internet:

We don’t really have anything exciting planned for this week; Wednesday is a public holiday here, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (La Festa dell'Immacolata); most everything will be closed.  Hoping to hear sometime soon that the transcription of my documents has been completed!

Muffa!

 “ We are riding on a railroad, singing someone else's song; sing along…”

- James Taylor, Riding on a Railroad

I’m writing this post as we’re riding the IC #704 bound for Rome; we should be arriving about 22:20 (or 10:20  PM if you’re not using a 24-hour clock).  Well, I did say I wanted to spend a little time in Rome…but I wasn’t expecting to do it under these circumstances…

Italian houses, particularly the old ones (and, let’s face it, most of them are old - I think the place we’re staying is at least 100-200  years old), are ventilated just as they were when they were originally built - meaning:  they’re pretty much not, by modern standards.  No exhaust fans in the bathrooms, no venting over the stove, no whole-house fans in the upper floors.  In some parts of Italy, moisture is a huge problem, even when it’s not the rainy season.  A certain amount of muffa (mold) is to be expected, especially around doors and windows, and usually this is easily dealt with by a quick squirt of anti-muffa spray followed wiping it away.  This is considered part of basic housekeeping, like dusting and sweeping.  Italians typically air out their homes every day for at least an hour or so, even in the coldest weather, and frequently run dehumidifiers.

It turns out that sometimes the daily airings and dehumidifiers aren’t enough to cope with the problem, particularly when the weather has been as wet as it has been this month.  For reasons I can’t even remember now, I went upstairs to the very upper floor (where we hadn’t been for days simply because we had no reason to be up there) and discovered muffa pretty much everywhere - on the ceilings, the utility room walls, and in the (thankfully more or less empty) guest room.  I think the guest room had it the worst, but the ceiling over the landing was pretty horrific, especially around the small skylight.  It wasn’t quite so bad in the utility room.  Yesterday, we (foolishly) tried for about 10 minutes to wipe down the walls before we realized that doing so was a bad, bad idea.  I was afraid one or the other of us might get sick.   Cleaning up this level of muffa is clearly a job for professionals.

I reached out to our translator for help in getting in touch with our landlords.  Although Nicoletta was on vacation this week (I was not aware of that when I messaged her), she took the time to contact the landlords to let them know, and we were expecting to meet with them this morning.  Only - they didn’t show.  On the other hand, they might actually have come very early while we were still in bed - we thought we heard the buzzer but by the time we got down the stairs, there was no one there.  Sometimes people ring our buzzer by mistake when they mean to ring the doctor’s office though, so who knows.

When they hadn’t come by lunchtime, I called my service provider (Nicoletta’s boss) directly.  He agreed that the landlords absolutely need to take care of the issue, and that we should not stay there in the meantime.  He offered to put us up in a B&B, but I said that we’d wanted to go to Rome anyway, so we’d do so now and come back Monday.  He thought that was a good idea and said that if the problem isn’t resolved by then, he will get us another apartment or B&B to stay in until it’s cleaned.

Fortunately, I was able to book train tickets for this afternoon, and luckily, the nice hotel where we stayed when we went to Rome a few years ago had a room available, too.  

And that is the story of why we’ll be spending Thanksgiving in Rome.

Paolo at Termoli Station, headed to Foggia, where we changed trains to head to Roma Termini Station.